The appartment I live in is partially underground so you maybe can tell from the photos. I share it with three other girls, there are 5 girls on my team (including my tl) who has her own apartment, and the four boys share an apartment. We cook/eat in our tl's room but have access to a kitchen in our own rooms incase we have our own food. The food is from our food budget though, although the sponsor does take us out to lunch once a week on wednedays which is AMAZING. The fence was done last Friday, took us two weeks. I didn't see any animals while working but I heard that some of the guys say deer inside of the fence and they were planning to go on a hunt soon? Should be interesting. Now that we're done with the fence we started and finished painting within the last week so now we're on to splitting and stacking wood! They need a lot of wood to power the pottery warehouse as well as other things around campus. I'm only in Minnesota for 3 weeks so we're departing this coming Friday to head back to campus.
My next project is exciting though! It's actually two smaller projects. The first will be in Vinton, IA with Parks and Rec my main task will include falling and cutting up trees damaged in the 2011 windstorm. The rest of the team (those who aren't sawyers) will be working on other tasks to beautify the park! After that we're doing to Michigan to be camp counselors at Lake Sherman YMCA! I'm a little nervous about that since I've never worked around kids much but it should be fine! I'll just be participating and leading them to activities! Should be interesting, hopefully I'll learn new things about how to lead groups (even if it is children)!
I came up with a really cool reflection for the team in which they create a "debrief" for their family/friends. I figured since I know I'm having a party when I get back and will probably be bombared with questions about what I've done a million times why not just create a presentation to share with people who are curious. It should be fun, although it does have to maintain some professionalism since it's for an activity so it may be a little dry but ohwell I'll try to be as interesting as possible.

My apartment

St cloud gardens

MINNEAPOLIS PICTURES (more on facebook)

Hello St. Johns!

This place is amazing! We got here yesterday midday after a six hour drive, it was by far the shortest travel we've had which was nice. On the first day we met Tom who is our sponsor, he surprisingly looks like my uncle Tommy :p He's a really nice and eager to learn EVERYTHING about NCCC; we gave him a thorough debrief on who we are and what we do. It's nice to serve someone who is genuinely interested in your background and what you're hoping to gain from this experience.
Today was our first day - we had a tour of the grounds which are lovely (I suggest googleing the campus, it's beautiful) and met a lot of people we'll be interacting with the next couple of weeks. This place is literally a self sustaining little town, it has more people than most towns in Minnesota. It has a power plant, fire station, police, post office, pottery studio, art gallery, library, church, restaurants, and more...there are like at least 100 monks living here at any time, they live here all their lives and many of the students (at this all men's school) come and live here for four years without leaving so they offer a lot of things! I don't know much about sports but they're a title 3 school and their coach won so many games (more than ANYONE else) they basically let him do whatever he wants..it was really cool. It was nice learning so much about where we are. Best of all there is a lake! I've been swimming each day :) it's going to be a daily activity I can feel it. I love it. The rooms we live in are dorms, they're earth homes though so it's semi-underground. It's a little warm but not too bad. I love the living arrangements and the grounds! This is going to be a fantastic project...
okay onto the work......
We're installing a 9 ft deer fence around 19 acres of oak forest which was rated as excellent condition. It's important because the deer population is out numbering the oak trees which isn't allowed the forest to replenish. The forest isn't only beautiful, it's functional! Everything on campus made of wood came from that forest! It's amazing to see. The work included in putting in the fence is pretty intense. Today we put in poles for the fence, they have to be 3 ft in the ground so the hole are already drilled for us but we have to do the final edits to it and make sure the pole will go in smoothly and evenly..then once the pole is in we have to level it and add tons of sand. Lots and lots of shoveling, honestly the worst part is the bugs! We have tons of bug spray and tick block and what not. They're intense though, never have I ever been so attacked by flies.
I love the site, I love the sponsors, and I love the work :)

so far so good.

LAA Reflection

We had to do a reflection today based on our life after americorps..I feel like it was pretty good so ill just post my responses here so you guys can see whats going on in my head:
1) demonstration and mastery of change: the entire time I've been in americorps I've been out of my "comfort zone" but I've accepted it and learned to embrace the discomfort and try to grow from it. I feel like my greatest contribution to the communities weve been serving has been my openness to learn as much as possible both through hands on work and service learning opportunities. The skills I've gained throughout my time have primarily been focused on team work ie compromise, communication, and coflict resolution. Flexibility is now a very strong trait of mine, not everything you do is "desirable" but it has to be done and sometimes you have to be willing to take the bad job or do extra work when you don't want to for the overall being of the team.
2) build and sustain effective teams: although my team is solid we still have issues when it comes to communication, often it takes someone being pushed too far for us to even acknowledge a problem. I've learned a lot from being on a team, mostly about myself. I learned im not always right but that doesn't mean im necessarily wrong, I also realize everyone should partake in group decisions thst effect us all because when that fails to happen it's impossible to work as cohesive group, it then becomes individuals. Living with so many different people has introduced me to ideas I've never even considered so im thankful for the diversity even if its not apparent when you look at us how different we truly are. I bring flexibility to the team as well as a sense of organization. I try to contribute these attributes in team meetings. I've learned I need to communicate my feelings to the team better, even if it is difficult.